


The Cop and The Kid

by ellebb



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Bonding over guns, Gen, Humans Are Weird Aliens, Let Me Give You Advice Even if My Own Life is a Mess, Sniping!!, You Darn Kids Says Garrus Vakarian, buddy cop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 14:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10573476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellebb/pseuds/ellebb
Summary: When Garrus hears about an actual, real life, non-VR gun range that can accommodate sniping on the Citadel, he's stoked.  There, he encounters a certain human kid that's at turns weirdly tight-lipped about herself, and annoyingly smug.  She gets on his nerves, but the kid sure can shoot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo, this is my take on the whole 'what if Garrus met the twins while on the Citadel' speculation. With my Ryder twins, Mira and Forta. And all their annoying little teenage selves.

Garrus ducked, avoiding decapitation.

“ _Hey_!  Watch where you’re going, you little shit!”

“Fuck you, copper,” the bow-shouldered twerp bellowed back at him.  His bike left neon orange butterfly trails as it clung up the sides of the storefronts, the overclocked mass drive rattling the plexi windows.

Garrus could flag the idiot down.  That bike wasn’t legal, and he did just try to run over a CSEC officer.  But compared to his usual treatment from his scummy clientele, the teen had practically given him councilor-status.

But Garrus was off duty.  Sure, the uniform didn’t say that, but his aching shoulder plates and the not-strictly-regulation rifle hooked to his back did say otherwise.

At 0400 hours, this block some dozen turns away from Silversun had its usual petty drug lords and their teenage fans.  Panhandlers and buskers glancing at his CSEC logos with scathing disdain.  Acrid recreational smoke bit at his eyes, making them water.  Even the Keepers hadn’t bothered to care about this alley’s filth.

Garrus checked his omnitool again.  Yeah, this was the place.  Freaking ulcer on the hull, but it was the place.  Just a sign flashing lazily, no windows.  More defensible than most.

It took two hard slaps on the door’s console for it to finally wheeze open pneumatically.  The salarian clerk barely looked up at him as he entered, throwing a datapad with all the rules and waivers for him to sign.  The clerk yawned as he scrolled through his omni-tool and Garrus threw the datapad back to him, with his signature.  The salarian sniffed and gestured for him to present his rifle and ammo for a registration scan.

Citadel real estate, from the very conception of a thing like ‘Citadel real estate,’ was at a premium.  And the asari managing the property racket would either try to micromanage distribution for promotion of species diversification or laugh in your face if you weren’t willing to sign to a fatal interest rate.  Needless to say, shooting ranges that had actual, non-VR, real-life amounts of space that would accommodate a competent sniper numbered few and far inbetween.

Garrus had only heard about this place from the CO of a squad from Boqueri Ward the other day.  Apparently frequented by multi-species military brass and some contracted guns that some law somewhere was likely looking for.  The guy had even tried to tell him that he’d seen a Spectre burning rounds there.

In the back, the dingy little prefab halls and century old aluminum furniture gave way to a huge room.  A high ceiling and a broad width dipped down as the floor fell to various swells and mini hills, variations in the landscape to provide different targets.  And it all went on for kilometers.  This had to be the only place like it on the Citadel.  No way could that length of uninterrupted space be replicated anywhere but offstation.

The silences of sighting pauses followed by the burst of a powerful round echoed in the otherwise empty chamber.  Someone else sat at a shooting station.  Even with their back turned to him, the small stature and bits of exposed soft flesh revealed them as human.  And that… er.  Hair.  Adolescent, female.  165 cm, approximately 54 kilos.  Skin: one of those brownish, yellowish shades.  No armor, just a ward kid’s civ clothes.  Gun: superior to his.

Great.

Garrus ignored the human and put down his equipment in a stall far down the range.  So much for some nice time alone with his Viper and live rounds.  You know, working out the stress of getting spit on by Hallex runners and getting his legs kicked out from under him by red tape.  He could grumble, but really the hall swept deep enough to provide plenty of privacy.  As long as everyone minded their own targets, it would be fine.

And the hall’s targets were great: those holo projectors of varren, pyjacks, and ugly criminals that had little mass effect fields to bounce the shot.  Just the spray of holo light alone didn’t satisfy the way hearing that static-y impact did.

Garrus settled down into a hard seat with one of the supposedly multi-species adaptive mold (read: uncomfortable for everyone).  He loaded the rifle, swung out the bipod, and set the weight of the rifle into balance, the legs of the bipod firmly on the table and the recoil pad against his uniform.  And that first inhale, that ritual of reaching into the depths of or your chest for the stillness.

Garrus booted the spotter program in his eyepiece with a single digit.

The first shot was a nice body-mass mark on a sketchy asari in pseudo-Eclipse armor that split the holo-light in a shower of sparks.  He watched the little mass effect field catch the shot through his scope, leaving a hole in the slowly fading asari.  The target even had a little death throw animation.

The tightness underneath his shoulder plates eased as he landed mark after mark.  However, as it does sometimes happen, subconsciously he and that human on the other side of the room began to fire at a similar rhythm.  And as this occurred, his shots became increasingly inaccurate.  Garrus muttered under his breath as what should have been a dead-on hit on a big, ugly varren’s four hearts skittered around its claws.

“Hey!”

Garrus paused.  He straightened from his scope.

“Hello!”

He bent back to peer around his station’s wall.  The human was perched standing on her chair, staring at him over her stall.

“You know I’m using warp ammo?  Your software’s shit.” She tapped near her eye, where Garrus wore his eyepiece, to illustrate.

Garrus blinked, feeling his mandibles tense.  He reached up to scroll through his last missed shots.  The after-analysis did show an interference in his drops from conflicting mass fields.

He refocused on the human. “What’re you using warp ammo for?”

She shrugged, her cheeks puffing up a bit and her eyes darting. “What’re you using a shitty spotting program for?  I bet it’s a modded Armex, right?”

Garrus shifted.  He squinted at her, hoping to catch sight of dilated pupils or inflamed capillaries, signs of Hallex or Stardust-- anything to put his uniform to use.  Little shit.

The human frowned at him, changing colors the way they sometimes did. “I’m testing against those targets’ fields.  Adjusting the warp of my shot.  For your information, _cop_.”

“And what program accommodates that?” Garrus asked.  Now that he thought of it, he didn’t see a visor on her.  He hadn’t seen one on her coming in, either.

The girl opened her mouth, closed it.  And she got that look he’d seen plenty of times before: _frick, man, I dunno shit, I need my lawyer, I know my rights!_  The human shrugged.  She disappeared from view and dropped to the other side.  Some rustling and clattering, and the girl emerged with that rifle (nearly as long as she was tall) slung over her back.  She glanced at Garrus, still watching her and her peculiar color change.

“Go to the Xi district in U’ulu Ward and find the volus Marfon.  She’ll sell you a program she built herself for way cheap,” she blurted out.

Turning heel, the girl all but ran out before Garrus could reply.

-

“Harken, you’re human, right?”

The human looked up from his terminal.  His little eyes tightened, nose doing that… _moving_ thing-- at Garrus, standing over his desk at CSEC HQ.

“Jesus, Vakarian-- you’re going to make detective any day, aren't you?”

 _Jesus_ … one of their Spirits, or something.

Garrus scratched behind his crest.  Even running on a generous couple of hours of sleep, the bustle of cops barking at each other, at criminals over in booking-- banged about his cranium.

“Well, hypothetically, Harken-- _hypothetically_ ,” Garrus drawled. “Say you had enough skill to take up a Viper or something.  Could you use it without a spotter device?”

Harken rolled his eyes. “Yeah, it’s called having a real person spot.  And fuck you, too.”

“You couldn’t, you know, just use your bare human eyes?”

“You got a case or something?”

“Try being something other than an asshole for once, Harken, and answer the question.”

The man sighed and turned back to his terminal. “No.  My human eyes are no better than yours.  They certainly couldn’t calculate wind velocity or anything.  Now screw off.”

Garrus screwed off.

He was chained to his desk tonight, to his comm channel and the petty complaints ringing down it.  Maybe a hanar would start preaching in the Presidium without a permit or something, stir up a little excitement.

So, a human couldn’t spot themselves, huh?  An adolescent female human with a well-used, well cared-for Tigress.  Quite a few years old, but a prototype for the Black Widow and quite respectable in range, power, and weight.  Rich kid.  Some sorta training.  Military family?

He spent the night yawning over IA document requests.

-

A couple days later, Garrus went back and the kid was there again.

He pointedly set up his gun with only one booth between them.  While he was extending the barrel, fixing on the scope, he looked up to find her frowning around the edge of her booth wall at him.  She blinked when he met her gaze and ducked out of sight.

“Hey,” he said, stopping her.

Slowly, she peeked back around at him.

“What?”

Garrus tapped at his visor. “Went and got that program.  Thanks for that.  I’ve just used it a little in VR, but I can tell it’s an improvement.”

She did that human color-changing thing, and also that teenage shrugging thing.  Seemed like that was universal among the species.

“In fact,” Garrus continued, “I bet I could out shoot you now.  I mean I could before, but let’s make a point of it.”

The kid leaned back to look at him better.  A smirk flitted about her face.

“I’m still using warp ammo,” she warned him.

“New program, remember?” Garrus said. “Besides, I’m willing to give a kid like you a handicap.”

“Tch,” the kid scoffed.  She fully disappeared from view. “Get your pea-shooter ready, cop.”

-

He was a better shot than her, but it was a close thing.  Give her a couple years, and he might be scrambling for excuses why some snot-nosed human was outgunning him.

Couple weeks passed by, and Garrus saw her a couple more times at that range.  They traded a little shit-talk, but he could tell she was enjoying having someone to compete with.  He was too, honestly.  He finally managed to get her out of the practice range, and stop at one of those cheap dextro-levo street vendors for a chat.

She munched on hot pepper poppers as she considered him, dark eyes boring into his face.  His mandibles twitched.

“Alright, Vakarian,” Mira (she’d finally dropped her name last time, but just the first one) said. “Go on, then.  Ask me The Questions.”

Garrus leaned back into his rickety little aluminum seat outside the vendor’s stall.  A couple fragile little tables sat in the greasy smoke of levo sausages, dextro fried noodles.  It made both of their eyes sting and their noses itch.  He sipped on a beer.  It was 0500, but whatever.  It was his day off.

“Which ones are those?” Garrus asked innocently.

The kid exhaled dramatically, rolling her eyes.  But the smirk in her lips screamed of sarcasm. “Y’know.  Who’re your parents, why are you slumming around in this dump so late, you should be in school, how’d you get to be a better shot than me, etcetera.”

“One-- no,” Garrus drawled. “Just no.  Two, I’m betting I can already guess most of those.”

“Shoot.”

He finished the beer, and banged it back on the table. “Parents are military.  Not merc, you’re too ‘nice’ of a kid for that.”

She made a face (scrunching up her nose and squinting) at being called a “nice kid.”  He ignored it.

“They-- or at least one of them, taught you to shoot.  They’re officers or something.  Big deals.  You dress nice, have a good gun.  Know your way around the Citadel, so you’ve lived here a while.  Only a big shot gets an extended posting here.  But they’re on assignment or something.  They’re not here, or you’d never have the freedom to run around like this.”

Her weird expression relaxed into something like hauteur, brows raised but her lips twitching in annoyance.  He began to chuckle.  She stuck her tongue out at him and went back to her pepper poppers.

Not a lot of people around at this hour.  Some drunks stumbling home from the direction of Silversun, other drunks stopping at the couple of street vendors set up in the narrow alley.  It was rank with hot oil, but it was quiet.  An occasional rhythm of ringing knives and cooking tongs.  You could see a pale sliver of false Citadel sky above them.

Mira spoke up again, “You know, I’ve already got Alliance recruiters dogging me.” She twirled a crispy popper around on a eating stick, staring at it hard. “I mean, I like the shooting and all.  But I dunno.  That’s always been my parents.  Dunno if it’s really _me_.”

Shit, if Garrus didn’t know _that_ feeling.  He fiddled with the empty beer bottle on the dented tabletop.

“My father was CSEC,” he told her. “A lot of the reason why I joined was him convincing me.”

She tilted her head at him. “And?”

“And?”

“Did you make the right decision?”

He was silent for a while, mandibles moving about vaguely. “Not really sure.  Some days are good.  Some days I get things done.  Others it seems like everyone upstairs is more concerned about their own carapace rather than the truth or what’s right.”

“Buuuuut,” she began, pulling up her legs against her chest and propping her head on her knees. “Your dad’s proud of you?  ‘Cause you’re sticking it out?”

Garrus exhaled. “Hell if I know.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you, Mira.  You’re a good shot.  You’d have a good career ahead of you if you join the Alliance.  But you’re what?  Fifteen?”

“Sixteen.”

“You’ve got time.  Think about it.  I’m sure your parents will be proud of you no matter what you choose.”

“Hmmm,” she hummed, squinting at him. “Says the turian that hates his dad’s job.”

“ _I don’t hate--_ ”

“Yeah, _suuuure._ ”

“Maybe spend less effort on the sass, and more on your aim.”

“Whatever.”


End file.
